Work Order Statistics

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

Is there a way we can capture Work Order Statistics? At the moment we are working on a system of editing the text summary field (merely a description) on work orders so that when the "Work Order List" Report is run we can export to excel and filter the lists with formulas to understand (from the text string in the summary field) :

Where the instruction took place (which datacentre)?
How many devices were affected?
Install/Decomm/Move?

This all seems a bit of a workaround though, back to what we are trying to avoid with DCO - spreadsheets!

Of course we have the change license and are familiar with the "task" dashboard but this does not provide us with the more basic need of logging work orders - what have we done & where have we done it.

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

It would seem the work-order list report would have to be customized to output the data you're seeking as it does not currently tally the information in that manner.

The "changes" pane under the report/analytics view provides a drill down mechanism to visualize work-orders based on project, assigned user or location, but that data is not exportable.

I also reviewed the audit report and filtered its output to work-order related functions. That report does provide you an audit view of individual tasks, when they occur and the change to the task, but its a detailed very not a summary.

Would you like us to open a feature request for the statistics you'd like to see in the work-order list report?

Regards

Greg Sterling

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

Hi Nigel

In addition to Greg's comments

I can understand your frustration about having to use Excel

I see a few alternatives for you to consider

Purchase StruxureWare Insight and learn to write your own reports - you get the report you want plus the ability to change it plus the ability to write any other reports required in the future

Have someone develop the Insight report for you - you don't have to learn Insight (BIRT), you get the report you want (but only the report you want)

If your organisation has an existing report writing or data query tool, use these to access the DCO Web Service API and/or the ETL Export DB to extract the data and turn it into whatever information you require.

Write a transformation to produce a regular (nightly?) report with the info you need.

You can read about these by selecting from the left hand pane at this page

I hope this also helps

Cheers

Ed

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

Thanks Ed,

Purchase StruxureWare Insight ...

We do already have Insight and will use it to tweak the Work Order List report and export that to excel which will interrogate the text for the metrics we require on completed work orders.

If your organisation has an existing report writing or data query tool, use these to access the DCO Web Service API and/or the ETL Export DB to extract the data and turn it into whatever information you require.

Write a transformation to produce a regular (nightly?) report with the info you need.

We do utilise an ETL export and it is part of the fabric of how we run our operations. Whilst it is potentially viable to data mine what we extract into reports it is out of my personal 'know how' and I raised this initial query for visibility into how regular DCO users like us are working around problems.

Thank you for your suggestions though.

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

Hi Nigel

Custom reports or integrations like the one you mention here is typically handled by our adaption team. Please contact Lasse Simonsen for more information.

Best,

Niels

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

Thanks Niels,

We are aware of the facilities offered by Lasse and the team. Thanks for the suggestion but as I have outlined previously this question was raised more for your visibility of how your customers are achieving their solutions.

If facilities are written into DCO in future releases to capture work order statistics then that would potentially be an easier route than we have taken (exporting to excel).

For the moment we have solved our question but the solution is perhaps not as 'elegant' - by relying on text fields extracted to excel and filtered by formulas.

Nigel

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

It would seem the work-order list report would have to be customized to output the data you're seeking as it does not currently tally the information in that manner.

Yes - that is what we are going to do, hence the description of editing the fields captured.

The "changes" pane under the report/analytics view provides a drill down mechanism to visualize work-orders based on project, assigned user or location, but that data is not exportable.

I also reviewed the audit report and filtered its output to work-order related functions. That report does provide you an audit view of individual tasks, when they occur and the change to the task, but its a detailed very not a summary.

Yes - I explored the changes pane and came to the same conclusions. Listing out the tasks is too much information for what we are looking for though.

Would you like us to open a feature request for the statistics you'd like to see in the work-order list report?

We do not require a feature request for this, our solution is a workaround without changing the software. Of course if you want to make the software better by including a facility to accurately capture the work order totals it would help companies like ours report on their KPI's.

My query was raised in case I had missed a facility to achieve what we need and secondly to feedback as a customer to you guys so you are aware what we are doing and how we are using the product.

DCIM_Support · ‎2020-07-03

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